Good news? Bad news? New biodiversity offset fund released in New South Wales, Australia

New NSW bio­di­ver­sity off­set fund hits the news

Yes­ter­day the news (at least in Aus­tralia) in the off­set­ting world were full of the announce­ment of the new bio­di­ver­sity off­set fund in the state of New South Wales, Aus­tralia. The pol­icy was pre­ceded by a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion and will enter into force from 1st Octo­ber 2014. Is it good news? Is it bad news? What do you think? What is sure is that it is def­i­nitely good that this is so much taken up by the media and dis­cussed in the pub­lic. Read more on the NSW infor­ma­tion por­tal on the New Off­set Pol­icy and in the offi­cial NSW media release: The Envi­ron­ment, Farm­ers & Indus­try to Ben­e­fit from New Off­set Pol­icy, and see all the news sources I have found below. Fur­ther­more, I have high­lighted some bites and quotes from the news below:

For the ben­e­fit of farm­ers and min­ers? (and the environment?)

NSW Farm­ers pres­i­dent Fiona Sim­son said the new sys­tem would reduce ten­sions between ­farm­ers and miners:

“The scheme means min­ers no longer have to nego­ti­ate directly with farm­ers over land for conservation.”

Envi­ron­ment min­is­ter Rob Stokes said changes would give land­hold­ers the oppor­tu­nity to receive pay­ments for man­ag­ing bio­di­ver­sity on their land through a fund paid into it by devel­op­ers to ‘off­set’ the impacts of large projects.

“A new fund will be set up, to enable stew­ard­ship pay­ments to land­hold­ers wish­ing to par­tic­i­pate in the bio­di­ver­sity pro­tec­tions for major projects,” Mr Stokes said. “Our aim is to use off­sets as an oppor­tu­nity for land­hold­ers to diver­sify their income and ensure they are a gen­uinely inte­grated part of the land­scape. It will also pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits by intro­duc­ing a con­sis­tent, trans­par­ent and sci­en­tific assess­ment approach, which will put an end to ad hoc off­set­ting prac­tices. The devel­op­ment of an off­sets fund will enable a more strate­gic approach to off­set­ting. The fund will ease the bur­den on pro­po­nents by let­ting them make pay­ments towards their off­set, instead of find­ing off­set sites themselves.”

No more like-for-like offsets?

Cur­rently devel­op­ers or min­ing com­pa­nies are required to find ‘like-for-like’ bio­di­ver­sity off­sets but the changes will allow them, if they can­not find suit­able land, to fund other con­ser­va­tion work of equal or higher con­ser­va­tion priorities.

It will also enable min­ing com­pa­nies to use reha­bil­i­tated sites at the mine as part of their off­sets strat­egy where there are good prospects of bio­di­ver­sity being restored.

“For too long, the plan­ning sys­tem has allowed for inad­e­quate off­sets. This pol­icy does lit­tle to address this issue. It not only fails to pro­tect bio­di­ver­sity, it may actu­ally has­ten its loss by allow­ing devel­op­ers sim­ply to throw money into a bio­di­ver­sity fund rather than pay to pro­tect sim­i­lar habi­tat else­where. Such ‘flex­i­bil­ity’ under­mines the cred­i­bil­ity and effec­tive­ness of the entire system.”

Phil Gib­bons from Aus­tralian National Uni­ver­sity is con­cerned about “leak­ages” and “paper offsets”

He says the NSW scheme may not stop the ongo­ing loss of biodiversity:

“Just putting aside an exist­ing patch of veg­e­ta­tion is not a gain. There must be gen­uine improve­ment to that veg­e­ta­tion or there must be new veg­e­ta­tion that’s cre­ated, and that’s rarely undertaken…since the intro­duc­tion of off­sets in Australia.”

He says some land used as off­sets could not have been used for any­thing else anyway:

“They can be paper gains because a lot of native veg­e­ta­tion is in exis­tence because it’s no good for any­thing else.

He is also con­cerned at the num­ber of out clauses or “leak­ages” in the off­sets leg­is­la­tion that allow devel­op­ers who can’t find “like for like” veg­e­ta­tion to off­set some­thing else.

“If their project is affect­ing a cer­tain eco­log­i­cal com­mu­nity or threat­ened species habi­tat and they can’t find the same habi­tat else­where then there is flex­i­bil­ity in the sys­tem to find a dif­fer­ent type of habitat.”

He says that leaves threat­ened habi­tats, which may have already been 90 per cent cleared, open to fur­ther clear­ing and that shouldn’t happen.

It could have been worse?

The most con­tro­ver­sial aspect of the draft pol­icy – the oppor­tu­nity to reduce the value of the required off­set if a project’s social or eco­nomic ben­e­fit is deemed sig­nif­i­cant enough, known as “dis­count­ing” – has been dumped.